A Sad Day for Anime Fans
Three months ago, I wrote an editorial on the story of a man being convicted of possessing anime child pornography. This was the result of the PROTECT act of 2003, which classifies fictional visual representations of children having sex to be illegal. I feel that this law is ludicrous on the grounds of no crime is ever truly committed in the world of fantasy that is anime and manga. Do you arrest a person for assisting with a murder if they watch a horror film? Of course not. If the characters don’t exist in real life, then there are no real victims. You simply can’t lock someone away for watching anime!
But sadly, they just did, and as ANN reports today, it’s for 20 years. Now, the guy was also sentenced for having actual child porn (you know, the kind with non-animated children) on his computer, and so it is justified that he face whatever punishment is coming to him. But they made it very clear that the anime was one of the reasons for his sentence. The US department of Justice even proudly declared in it’s press release that his “… conviction for receiving cartoons is the first conviction under the statute that was not based on actual photographs of children.” Convicted for non-real photos… why aren’t they seeing their own hypocrisy?!?
This is a sad day not only for anime fans, but for anyone who likes fictional works of art. Fiction exists because it’s not restricted by the laws of State or science. I don’t support child pornographic anime, but I can’t believe that someone can be arrested and sent to jail for it! Doesn’t it scare you? What is that saying to the world about America’s idea of freedom? How can we look down on a war over political cartoons in the Middle East when we just sent a guy to jail over fake kiddy porn?
This is not good… this is not good at all…
